VH-AJM Heston
Phoenix
(c/n 1/2)
Only six Heston Phoenix aircraft were built in England
between 1936 and 1938. VH-AJM
was the second of them and
was exported directly from the factory, and registered in May of
1936.
Theoretically it should have been registered somewhere in the VH-UU-
series, but
received dispensation
for the 'special' rego -AJM. Aviation Historian Tim Kalina
provides
the following facts:
VH-AJM was owned by the
famous Australian aviator Jimmy Melrose (hence the out-of-
sequence -AJM). The name 'Billing'
on the aircraft was his mother's maiden name. (She
was Hilda Westley Billing
before her marriage to James Melrose.) Jimmy's mother purch-
ased all his
aircraft and he named them after her. Melrose had two
earlier aircraft before
the
Phoenix. A Puss Moth named 'Hildegarde' in which he flew solo in
the 1934 Centenary
Race and a
Percival Gull Four named 'Westley' which he flew from England to
Australia.
On
this latter flight he was passed in the air by Kingsford Smith in the
Lockheed Altair 'Lady
Southern
Cross' making Melrose the last person to have seen the the
Altair. Anyway, the
Phoenix was also
flown solo from England to Australia after it had been purchased new,
departing Lympne on 9
April 1936 and arriving in Adelaide on the 25th of April. Melrose
intended to start a
charter business with it, but sadly lost his life when the aircraft
suffered a
structural failure
and crashed near Melton, Victoria on 5 July 1936 shortly after departing
Essendon. A
privately published book entitled 'The Jimmy Melrose Srory' by Eric
Gunton
(1990) provided much
of this information. Seen below is an historic shot sent to
me by
Robert Milburn of Mount Barker, SA,
showing the aircraft being refueled with a can and a
pump. It
transpires that Robert's (late) father was involved in the surfacing of
the Oodnadatta
airport in 1939 and
took several photos of aircraft at that time. Clearly this shot
was taken
before that, although
whether the venue was, in fact, Oodnadatta is not known,
